Page 30 - bne_May magazine 2023_20230503 BRICS

30 I Cover story bne May 2023
Russia was the first to make explicit
its intolerance of being told what to
do – and sanctioned if it didn't comply. In February 2020, during a visit to Moscow by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs Joseph Borrell, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov threw down the gauntlet in his “New rules of the game” speech. In a new hard foreign policy, Lavrov said that the Kremlin would no longer tolerate the dual policy of being told what to do on one hand, and expected to do business with the other. He went on to threaten
to break off diplomatic relations with Europe if Brussels didn't agree, and expelled three European diplomats while he was physically in a meeting with Borrell, who was still unaware what was going on.
Most of the EMs have the same complaint but they are not willing to risk war with the West over the dual policy of sanctions and business. But that dual policy remains the mainstay of Western diplomacy. However,
now there appears to be a creeping realisation that a carrot and stick approach to international relations may not work as well any more.
In a major policy speech in April, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in
a continuation of the dual policy of carrots and sticks with one hand she reached out to Beijing, calling on it
to maintain “constructive and fair economic relations”, but on the other warned that the US would have “frank” talks with Beijing if the US strategic interests were threatened, for which most commentators read “Taiwan.”
“The US will assert ourselves when our vital interests are at stake,” the Treasury Secretary said. “But we do not seek to ‘decouple’ our economy from China’s. A full separation of our economies would be disastrous for both countries. It would be destabilising for the rest of the world.”
That is just what Russia has done – and to Europe’s cost, although it has affected the US much less, as it is not reliant on Russian imports. The US, however, is very reliant on Chinese imports after
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the globalisation of the last decades has led to the US moving much of its factory work to EMs. If trade relations with China were broken off, then making iPhones, and many other products across a wide spectrum of industries, suddenly becomes difficult.
Yellen’s comments on maintaining economic co-operation must ring hollow in the Chinese capital after the introduction of the new CHIPS legislation, which specifically bans exports or sharing the US’ best electronic technology with China.
Lecturing EMs is not limited to US diplomats. Europeans regularly indulge in the same and German Foreign Minister
Macron was in Beijing in April, where he took a much more conciliatory and statesman-like line. He caused waves by telling journalists on the plane on the way home that Europe should take charge of its own destiny and “not follow where the US leads.” He went on to add that Europe should become its own superpower –
a third pillar of the international order – but was accused of being tricked by Xi into peeling Europe off from the US ahead of a widely anticipated confrontation between the two.
Macron got roasted for his comments, accused of appeasement and being tricked by Xi, who was trying to peel the EU off from the US by offering France a series of lucrative investment deals.
“The US will assert ourselves when our vital interests are at stake. But we do not seek to ‘decouple’ our economy from China’s”
Annalena Baerbock did the same thing, lambasting Beijing for not condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and threatening China with “consequences” if it sold arms to Russia from a podium next to her counterpart Qin Gang.
"We cannot get around China," she clarified, adding that the economic relations between the two countries
are "good and important." German trade turnover with China is €300bn
a year, a third more than Russia and
on a par with Russia’s entire trade
with all the EU. Bilateral co-operation should continue, but Germany "should not be naive," Baerbock said. As part
of the government's planned China strategy, Baerbock said that "we must safeguard freedom and the rule of law in the long term" and "stand up for the international order with a clear stance."
Qin’s response was rather bemused, as China has already pledged not to sell arms to Russia, explaining that China’s policy is not to inflame the situation, before he politely went on to say that China will do whatever it feels is in its best interests and doesn't need German advice.
Despite Macron’s statesmanship, his message will not be welcomed by EMs, as for them it is just a reshuffle at the top, with the West intending to continue to dominate the rest but reshuffling the chairs at top table. What the EMs are calling for is a wholesale remake of the global order, a “democratisation” at a sovereign level, that takes their interests more into account.
It is something that all the members of the emerging BRICS bloc have in common: they reject the Western premise that they are the “leaders of the world” and don’t see themselves as in competition with the West but partners. Except they reject the West’s self-appointed role as “global policeman” or the right to interfere in any country’s domestic affairs.
Colonial resentment
This resentment of living in a two-tier system where the US, France, German and the UK make all the rules is becoming more visible thanks to the Ukraine war.
Hungarian President Viktor Orban has long admired Putin and Hungary’s